Slowness of this site...

Red Hand Supporter · Post by **Red Hand Supporter** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 2:26 pm

Over the past few days when on this site, it has been rather slow when posting and just browsing over the different sections. Is anybody else experiencing this or is it just my connection?

goodaine · Post by **goodaine** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 2:43 pm

I thought it was just me & an old pc

Post by **fermain** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 5:30 pm

I've been fine.

browner · Post by **browner** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:04 pm

What do you expect.......................it's run by morons!

jamesie · Post by **jamesie** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 9:39 pm

i've been having problems with the site too...

ultimate ulster chick · Wed Apr 11, 2007 10:23 pm

Me too. But my general internet has been slow today (and yesterday evening) so that could be personal. I also appear to be taking my internet from a neighbour - I don't know how seeing as I've never been able to before. I struggle to get internet in my room from the box which is on the top floor of the house!! Weird...

colinh · Post by **colinh** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 10:27 pm

Indeed have to agree while the net seems to slow up quite a bit in the evenings the site has been very slow on my main pc, the laptop and at work but hey its brill tonight.

Red Hand Supporter · Post by **Red Hand Supporter** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 12:02 am

Well its now working fine, so who knows?? Gremlins at work....

sciggles · Post by **sciggles** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 9:08 am

A fair bet is that it was the easter holidays, everyone else is on the internet/xbox live etc. Theres only so much bandwidth to go around...

cables · Post by **cables** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 11:51 am

Yes there is Sciggles - perhaps this will help the non-techocrats.

What is Contention Ratio?
Contention Ratio is the number of users sharing one unit of data capacity. The lower the contention ratio the higher the quality of service. A 50:1 contention ratio would mean that up to 50 broadband customers are sharing the same bandwidth at any one time.

The quality and speed of your broadband connection is dependent on the number of users online at any given time. Business broadband services will often have much lower contention ratios to enable the ISP's to give business users a more consistent quality of service.

The higher the contention ratio the cheaper the broadband package will be. The contention ratio is an important factor involved in the quality and speed of your chosen broadband package. The average contention ratio for a home user package is 50:1 and 20:1 for a business package.

Why should I care about contention ratios?
Most broadband services are provided on a 50:1 contention ratio. This means that at any one time you may be sharing your Internet access with up to 49 other users all sharing the same bandwidth.

So, if you are using a 512kb connection and each of the other users sharing the access are using it at the same time, your connection speed could be reduced to as little as 10kb!

Fortunately it is unlikely that everyone uses the connection at the same time. However this does highlight the importance of choosing an ISP with a low contention ratio as the fewer people sharing the line, the more bandwidth you potentially have.

mikerob · Post by **mikerob** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 1:18 pm

Well I'm in a building with 9 x 1 GB/sec and 4 x 100MB/sec connections to the internet using 10 different internet service providers and it is slow for me too!!

jamesie · Post by **jamesie** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 1:57 pm

its still shot for me... has been all day like

Red Hand Supporter · Post by **Red Hand Supporter** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 2:32 pm

The "gremlins" have struck again. Dead slow and i'm supposed to be at 39Mbps

Samstew · Post by **Samstew** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 5:51 pm

I have been having problems over the past few days with the site just hanging!
When I started a thread on Wednesday, requesting some information, the site just hung, returned a message advising me to try later, and when I checked later, the thread had been posted twice!
I certainly did not submit the thread twice so I am relieved to see that this can possibly be attributed to a technical problem.

sciggles · Post by **sciggles** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 7:22 pm

mikerob wrote:Well I'm in a building with 9 x 1 GB/sec and 4 x 100MB/sec connections to the internet using 10 different internet service providers and it is slow for me too!!

Doesn't help much if one of the machines on the other end has a slow connection

The problem is actually one of the routers along the way seemingly, so it'll probably pickup soon...